For nearly 30 years Bridget Jones has been a staple in British pop culture, from solidifying our collective crushes on Hugh Grant and Colin Firth to sparking controversy over the way body image is discussed in the early movies. And now, Bridget is back. This time she’s different: a mother of two young children and a widow.
Despite knowing this, I graced Edinburgh’s Cineworld last week and was still taken aback by how emotional the film was. There are constant reminders of what is missing – whether it’s Bridget arriving to a dinner party without her Mr Darcy whilst imagining he is still there, or her daughter asking every man she meets if he’s going to be her new ‘daddy’.
Nevertheless, what struck me most was its highlighting of what has been gained. The film is full of Bridget’s wins: she returns to her job and achieves career success, yet equally fosters comfort at home. There is montage upon montage of her and her children, and plenty of laughter and adventures had together. In moments of mundanity this film highlights beauty. The plot of the film is not even really about Darcy’s death but is instead about Bridget finding herself again. There’s laughter as much as there are tears both in this movie and amongst a nostalgic audience.
‘Bridget Jones: Mad about the boy’ tells us the harsh reality of grief: life doesn’t stop. There will be holidays, life updates, and small inside jokes your loved ones will miss. This is what makes life so painful, there is so much love that simply cannot dissipate. Yet, time carries on regardless. This film recognises this reality but flips it on its positive head: “what is grief, if not love persevering.”
Grief can be a taboo subject, it’s hard to know what to say to friends who are grieving. Thus, the fact that there’s an incredibly successful movie with the largest opening weekend for a rom com in British film history highlighting such a serious topic is endearing to see.
It must be noted that even in St Andrews, Anchor, a new collective, has been set up to help students navigate grief and loss. Perhaps, because we’re coming from a period of profound loss marked by the COVID pandemic, grief is becoming a more widely spoken about subject – and rightfully so.
Sometimes people are taken too early and sometimes they live long, beautiful lives. The most powerful moment of the movie – and what I think summarises what this film aims to tell us about grief – was a conversation between Bridget and her father. As he lies in a hospital bed, he tells Bridget “it is not enough to just survive, you have to live.” There can still be beauty in sadness. It’s a complex inexplicable thing, but isn’t that exactly what grief is?